2016: The Year of the Mega Breach

“Excuse me, are you aware of what’s happening right now? We’re facing 20 billion security events every day. DDoS campaigns, ransomware, malware attacks …” says a woman sternly to an associate in a recently aired commercial featuring Watson and IBM Security. She may have been an actor, but the question and the threats she described plague real-world organizations and their security operations teams daily.

The Year of the Mega Breach

IBM X-Force knows the difficulties organizations face when it comes to finding time to step back from day-to-day operations to look at the big security picture. Because of this, they may be left with many unanswered questions, such as:

Fortunately, IBM X-Force takes the guesswork out of assessing the security threat landscape for organizations with the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index. To form assessments regarding the threat landscape, X-Force researchers draw on numerous data sources to include both data from monitored security clients — billions of events per year from more than 8,000 client devices in more than 100 countries — and data derived from noncustomer assets, such as spam sensors and honeynets.

The Big Security Picture

The following key trends point to a continued need to focus on security fundamentals.

World-changing leaks: The security landscape was rocked with unprecedented leaks of comprehensive datasets, with over 4 billion compromised records exposed.

Decline in attacks: The average IBM monitored security client experienced fewer attacks compared to last year, down 12 percent. But that doesn’t necessarily mean less danger; it could indicate that attackers are relying more on proven attacks, thus requiring fewer strikes.